Economy

....would benefit the workers there.

What it did instead was to create the same type of wealth disparity "there" -- regardless where "there" was or is -- that was being created here. In other words, a few greedy bastards in China got fabulously wealthy exploiting the labor of their Chinese workers, while at the same time further enriching the likes of Steve Jobs -- may he be reincarnated as a [s]worker[/s] slave for one of Apple's Chinese contractors -- and impoverishing the Americans who used to work in the electronics field.

Ditto for clothing manufacture, shoe manufacture, appliance manufacture. In many cases, the [s]workers[/s] slaves were paid so little that they could not afford to buy the merchandise they were manufacturing, even though that was often the justification for locating manufacturing facilities there.

The other aspect that often is not even explored is that the American working class in the couple of decades following WW2 enjoyed increasing prosperity to the point that the gap between the American worker's lifetyle and the lifestyle of workers in even second world economies was enormous. Few want to admit that the American working class, as a victim of capitalist advertising, was as guilty of exploiting many workers in "developing" nations as were the managers of the companies that were relocating. In that sense, the American working class was living pretty comfortably, using too much non-renewable energy, depleting resources far more rapidly than any other economy.

So it's almost certainly not a bad thing that American consumers take a good look at their profligate ways and cut back a little or even more than a little.

Unfortunately, the lifestyles of the pigs at the top of the trough don't want that, nor with they give up any of their even more profligate ways. When Bill Gates comes out and says, "I've made sufficient billions off Microsoft and henceforth new editions of Windows will sell for $15 and older editions will be supported as long as there's a single computer still operating on Windows 95, 2000, XP, Vista, etc., etc., etc." then things might begin to change. But the Jobses and the Gateses and the rest of the bazillionaires are raking in money that they never earned. And the people who are earning it for them are being treated like shit.



TG